The Suspension Accident: It Finally Happened...

Kinksters talk quite a bit about the inherent risk of bondage and other kinky play. They learn the proper procedure, to mitigate that risk — but rarely do you hear about the stark reality that no matter what precautions you take or how safe you play, people can still get hurt.

I haven’t had a day since the accident that I’ve not thought about it. I could have killed her. The scenarios play in my head over and over. There have been nights of deep darkness. The grief lingers. She’s suffered pain and trauma of flesh and heart, not only in the moment of the accident, but long after as well. Her healing and recovery will take time. The depth of emotional hurt for the person I dropped will be profound and long lasting.

Those of us who play with kink have access to scores of workshops, seminars, and manuals on how to avoid this very sort of thing. But when it actually happens, none of it is enough.

The reality is, I’m simply lucky something like this didn’t happen sooner. One of the things we forget when we get into the play space is no matter how many of those classes you’ve taken (or in my case, taught), no matter how many knots you’ve tied, or how many scenes you’ve negotiated, it never becomes perfectly safe. After twenty years of public and private rope play, I was reminded of a single, brutal truth — a truth of which few dare to speak: if you do kink long enough, you will have a scene go bad, sometimes horrifically bad.

Mountain climbers and motorcyclists alike have their own version of that rule. There are two kinds of bikers; those who’ve crashed their bikes, and those who haven’t crashed their bikes yet. But in the kink milieu, we’re silent about the risk. The workshops and guidebooks become incantations that will protect us from harm with mystical infallibility. Bad things only happen to the newbies and the tourists, not real kinksters who know what they’re doing — so goes the unspoken faith. Because mishaps and accidents reside in the realm of the hypothetical, when it becomes real and personal, we’re often not prepared.

The woman I dropped was my co-performer at a fetish dinner theater; two hundred plus guests in elegant attire were watching us. One minute, she was flying through the air, her graceful arms flowing. The next, she was on the floor. I had a nanosecond of bafflement, and then it hit me:

She fell.

I dropped her.

Even as time slowed and stretched, my old military training came up. Over two hundred people were watching us, and panic would only make things worse. After quickly assessing she was conscious and could move, I decided the best thing for her safety and the audiences would be to get her offstage in as calm a fashion as possible. Staying in character, I “danced” her offstage and to the dressing room where the medically trained staff attended to her.

What draws most of us to kink is that it allows us to access raw, intense emotions that we have to keep locked away on a day-to-day basis. The risk is that while a good scene can send you flying so high you think you’ll break right through the sky, a bad one can be devastating, and the devastation doesn't stop at the end of the evening. The emotional fallout can come at different stages and at different times, like any grief process.

That kind of trauma doesn’t fit easily in how we think about “sex positivity.” So much of our training and community values are based on being positive about sexuality that negative experiences get swept under the rug.

There is too much at stake in a scene for us to pretend that with the proper invocations, everything will go right. If we are not ready for things to go wrong, we can’t be there for our friends and partners when a scene causes physical or emotional injury.

Perhaps the next stage in kink education needs to be training to respond to “Oh, shit!” situations, so that responses to crises in a playspace become as standard as knowing your safeword and packing EMT shears.

But to go beyond even that, to start to discuss failed scenes openly and with compassion, we have to realize that the pain and consequences go deeper than we might first think. The loss of trust in partner and self can be deeper than any wound.

Even the best of responses is never perfect. I did the best I could for my co-performer: I went with her to the hospital and paid her medical bills. Fortunately her physical injuries were not as catastrophic as they could have been. The depth of the emotional pain, however, is likely to be far deeper, but only she will know how deep.

What I do know is that I screwed up. She trusted me with her body and safety, and I quite literally let her fall. I’m not sure when I’ll do another suspension. For now, I have to go back to the drawing board and review my own skills before I’m ready to take flight with another. I’ll be working up towards that.

No matter how much we study or train, know this: we will fail someday. When that day comes, be ready.

Comments

Scootah

The part that really bugs me about this story isn't that the knot slipped. That shit happens. It shouldn't lead to a fall, a sensible rigger should build enough redundancy into their tie that a single human error doesn't send someone to hospital. But people make mistakes. I'm not sure how such an experienced rigger, in the full light of sobriety makes that big a mistake - but shit, it's forgivable.

The part that really bugs me is this 'dancing off the stage' business. Because the accounts from people other than Midori, it sounds an awful lot like she tried to save the show. Like she tried to scoop up the dropped bottom and waltz it away like it wasn't anything for the audience to worry about.

That bugs the fuck out of me. And not just because it's stupid, and ignores the risk inherent in moving someone after a fall like that without even checking to see if they have a back or neck injury. It seems a hell of a lot like salvaging the performance was your first impulse, and the well being of the person you were performing with was an afterthought. And that's not something that I'd see as being terribly forgivable.

I acknowledge that haters gonna hate. The internet is full of that. But frankly, I don't think I'm even a little bit of a hater. I really like Midori's published works. I've spoken well of them to a lot of people and I've always regretted that I never got to see her workshops. My friends who have speak very well of them and I've recommended them on that basis to people who were considering going. But I'd have a bloody hard time letting anyone who's priorities are more about the performance than their partners safety play unsupervised at any event I was responsible for.

02/10/2012

Sunshine Love

One thing I'm seeing is that people are viewing this in two distinctly different ways: play versus performance.

The person who was injured repeatedly referred to herself as a bottom, playing in scene. But this wasn't play. It wasn't a scene. It was a paid performance by two supposed professionals in a public venue - not a scene between friendly amateurs at a sex club, private home or dungeon. As such, different sets of best practices and obligations apply.

If this were any other sort of live performance, the fellow performers would not be the ones expected to do the medical assist off stage. Why is that the expectation for Midori? Is it a reasonable expectation?

I feel that judging a paid performer based on play party standards is inappropriate and it leads me to wonder if ANY riggers who perform for pay bother to have spotters on hand for their performances or if they just rely on their skills to handle everything on their own if the rope hits the floor. If so, that's kind of crazy and is something that should perhaps be discussed.

What -is- standard best practice for kinky paid performers regarding having a backup team of sorts? Whose job is it to get injured performers off stage? I've never heard of ANY other kind of event where their co-performers were expected to do so.

Technical mistake aside, I think Midori reacted professionally within the context of the event whereas the language of the injured performer's testimony seems more like a reaction to a personal scene gone wrong, which simply isn't the case.

02/19/2012

Hebari

Apparently it was a quick trip back to the drawing board
[https://fetlife.com/events/92079/v2]

wait a minute. Scootah your comment on the dancing off stage is ill informed. do you even know how people react to a situation like this? Dancing off stage was the best thing she could of done. Else there whould of been alot of yelling and a crowd of pointless are you okay do you need help quick let me crap which would of made matters worst. Also as a preformer of any type of art, you take on a responsibility for not only your safety and your co workers but the crowd and that inculdes keeping them out of the show and away from the participants. -__-

We where not there we do not know how she fell so can not judge if it was a bad idea to move her. She checked her movements. From experince if you break something can't move it, go figure. The other option would of been to kick all of the audience out of the room while waiting for medical help. Hysteria of a large group is annoying. Also since she was conscious which means she was able to help make the decsions. Then I also want to point out the military training. I am trained for NA, CPR and first aid response, I respect military training. So unless you have medical training as well, do not put down others actions that are directed by their training.

Author

Frequent sightings of her from around the globe make us wonder if she ever sleeps or if she’s cloned her self. A sexuality educator, sex-positive activist, and artist, she’s made an improbable career out of being the traveling sexpert. Don’t miss the groundbreaking book “Seductive Art of Japanese Bondage” which first cracked open the mysteries to Westerners, the hot essays in “Wild Side Sex: The Book of Kink” and twisted dark science fiction in “Master Han’s Daughter”. Learn the basics in “Midori’s Expert Guide to Sensual Bondage” DVD.

Don't miss her other classes in your area!
www.FHP-inc.com

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